But worst of all, naturally, was the condition of Sicily, the chosen
land of the plantation system. Brigandage had long been a standing
evil there, especially in the interior; it began to swell into
insurrection. Damophilus, a wealthy planter of Enna (Castrogiovanni),
who vied with the Italian lords in the industrial investment of his
living capital, was attacked and murdered by his exasperated rural
slaves; whereupon the savage band flocked into the town of Enna, and
there repeated the same process on a greater scale.

The slaves rose
in a body against their masters, killed or enslaved them, and summoned
to the head of the already considerable insurgent army a juggler
from Apamea in Syria who knew how to vomit fire and utter oracles,
formerly as a slave named Eunus, now as chief of the insurgents
styled Antiochus king of the Syrians. And why not? A few years before
another Syrian slave, who was not even a prophet, had in Antioch
itself worn the royal diadem of the Seleucids.(15)